Chandler: Notes on dancing, idols

I didn’t grow up with, nor do I still have, any desire to study hard at ballroom dancing, but the way star dancer Chelsie Hightower described life in that circuit has me more than a little intrigued.

Hightower was a competitive ballroom dancer for years before auditioning for FOX’s “So You Think You Can Dance” and later transitioning to ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.” She’s one of the headliners of “Ballroom with a Twist,” the season-opening offering from Civic Amarillo’s Broadway Spotlight Series.

“You’re wearing expensive dresses, $1,500 and up, in every competition. You’re in full hair and makeup — one-inch long nails on and giant eyelashes. It’s an insane world,” she said. “I was exposed to a lot of things, 10- and 12-year-old boys and girls smoking in the hallways.

“You grow up fast.”

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Don’t forget that performances for the 18th annual World Championship Ranch Rodeo from the Working Ranch Cowboys Association continue through Sunday.

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking with three of the cowboys competing this year in events in the Amarillo Civic Center Cal Farley Coliseum, 401 S. Buchanan St.

Dane Driver of Garden City’s Driver Land & Cattle said he’s glad to see the love for rodeo continue in the WRCA’s junior rodeo.

“Watching the kids, that’s how you keep a sport going,” Driver said. “You’ve got them little ones in the stands, and they’re either going to want to be in there competing or bringing their kids (to watch) when it’s time.”

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And finally, on a sad note, one of my earliest journalistic influences died this week.

Nancy Ezzell — or “Nan,” as everyone always called her — died Sunday at age 93 after a life devoted to covering community news for The Canadian Record, the weekly newspaper in my hometown.

I grew up reading Nan’s Petticoat Patter column, which ran weekly for an amazing 55 years, offering tidbits of advice, accolades and more. I made the cut a couple of times, as I recall, meriting a mention after I landed my first professional job in journalism at The Pampa News and a few notes after I moved to Amarillo.

Nan was so encouraging of my career, and I wish I’d told her more often what an impact she and her late husband Ben had on me.

I grew up reading newspapers — the Record, naturally, plus the Pampa paper and our Amarillo Daily News — and figured out, thanks to a phenomenal high school journalism class taught by Lea Podzemny, that I had something of a knack for writing.

I learned the basics in that class, but it was Nan and Ben who showed me, just by way of putting out their award-winning paper every Thursday, that journalism could be a higher calling. That sharing people’s stories and covering a community in its brightest and its darkest days matters.

Ben died in 1993, while I was still in college, honing the kind of skills that seemed to come so naturally to him. I keep a copy of his memoir, “The Editor’s Ass,” on my desk, flipping through it when I need a chuckle or a reminder that this job is worthwhile.

He dedicated the book to Nan, “who has been my co-editor, co-publisher and co-everything for more than 40 years.”

Their daughter Laurie Ezzell Brown — one of the fiercest, most intelligent journalists I’ve ever had the pleasure to know — took over as co-editor and co-publisher of the Record after her dad’s death, working alongside her mother.

“I’ve always said she made Ben R. Ezzell possible and has left behind her own remarkable legacy of kindness, grace, intelligence and dignity, all of which were on full display to the very end,” Laurie told me this week.